1. Field of the Invention
The present invention discloses a substrate for fabricating protein microarrays.
2. Description of Related Art
Microarray technology has become a crucial tool for large-scale and high-throughput biology. It allows fast, easy and parallel detection of thousands of addressable elements in a single experiment. In the past few years, protein microarray technology has shown its great potential in basic research, diagnostics and drug discovery. It has been applied to analyze antibody-antigen, protein-protein, protein-nucleic-acid, protein-lipid and protein-small-molecule interactions, as well as enzyme-substrate interactions. Recent progress in the field of protein microarrays includes surface chemistry, capture molecule attachment, protein labeling and detection methods, high-throughput protein/antibody production, and applications to analyze entire proteomes.
Efficient immobilization of protein is a key factor in determining the overall success of a microarray. If the immobilized probes are not correctly oriented on the microarray surface or are denatured, it can dramatically affect the downstream protein interaction events. Therefore, the selection of substrate material and its surface treatment pose a big challenge in the manufacturing of protein chips. Conventional treatment of substrate for protein microarray involves a dual-layer modification process, where the modified substrate contains a buffer layer and a reaction layer. The buffer layer serves to connect the substrate and the reaction layer, where one end of the buffer compound may react with the substrate and the other end may react with the reaction layer to help immobilize the reaction layer on the substrate. The reaction layer comprises compound having the function of protein-capture agent, which can immobilize protein on the reaction layer and furthermore on the substrate through the buffer layer.
The conventional process for modification of protein microarrays substrate consists of at least two modification steps, which are time consuming and run the risks of resulting in uneven modified surface, residual solvent and protein denaturation caused by reactants.